March 2010
“I perceived that I was not particularly suited to stand a condition of utter...”
– Franz Kafka, Memoirs of the Kalda Railway.
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George Orwell, You and the Atomic Bomb (1945) →
George Orwell, writing in October, 1945, possibly the first use of the term “cold war” to describe, well, what was to become the Cold War:
For forty or fifty years past, Mr. H. G. Wells and others have been warning us that man is in danger of destroying himself with his own weapons, leaving the ants or some other gregarious species to take over. Anyone who has seen the ruined cities of...
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A brief overview of the development of Western... →
This is too good to just sit there on a semi-obscure forum. This basically traces the entire history of Western Philosophy. Although you may object to the label “brief”, when you consider the amount of material covered, it’s hard to disagree. I haven’t digested it all, but from what I’ve seen, it’s both accurate and interesting. You can skip a lot of the...
Objectively speaking
The press is too concerned with one kind of objectivity and too unconcerned with another. Objectivity can be tricky to pin down, but the term has at least two meanings: one is that of impartiality, the other is that of reality undistorted by personality or ideology. The so-called “objective” reporter is so concerned with being impartial that he loses track of objective reality. The...
“if(computer.fail==true){
background.setColor(blue);
user.frown();...”
– LimerickDB.
Inside the Mundaneum →
A long piece on Paul Otlet’s early 1900s Mundaneum — a sort of snail-mail Google, Wikipedia and Library of Alexandria all in one:
On the night of June 1, 1934, a Belgian information scientist named Paul Otlet sat in silent, peaceful protest outside the locked doors of a government building in Brussels from which he had just been evicted…
Thirteen years earlier, Otlet’s...
“The most memorable note [Treme co-creator Eric] Overmyer ever received was from...”
– David Simon, the HBO Auteur.
I love magazines. There’s just something very attractive about the medium that I can’t quite articulate, something different from books, newspapers and the distraction-fest that is the internet. Stack is a service that serves magazine lovers: you subscribe and they send you a magazine 6, 8 or 12 times a year. Like a regular subscription, except they send you a new magazine each time....
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flibbertigibbet →
Here’s an f-word for you, as far as I can tell not noted here or here (does that mean everyone knows it already?).
flibbertigibbet • noun • a silly, flighty, or scatterbrained person, especially a pert young woman with such qualities.
Hastily rendered opinions on several things.
The Baffled asked: Can “democracy” go too far? In America these days it seems every public position, even dog-catcher, is open for election. In Texas recently the board that sets curriculum standards for public education has decided to re-write history, choosing to emphasize “conservative” ideals. The board is elected and dominated by Republicans. No experts are consulted...
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delgrosso asked: What are some of your thoughts on the current state of storytelling?
More specifically, do you think the world will ever see another Great Epic Tale, or has our collective attention span become too small and our scope of understanding too narrow for such a thing to be created?
More specifically, do you think the world will ever see another Great Epic Tale, or has our collective attention span become too small and our scope of understanding too narrow for such a thing to be created?
“[His speeches are] an army of pompous phrases moving across the landscape in...”
– William Gibbs McAdoo on Warren Harding (president of the US, 1921-23). I’m going to use that phrase somewhere.
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shadowfirebird asked: Forgive me if you've posted a long account about this, and this is just off the cuff. What do you think about relativism?
I read a lot about how "spineless relativists" are destroying the morals of my country (the UK). And I get really mad. Because to my way of thinking all ethical systems are relative. I mean, as opposed to what? Coming from God? I'm not an...
I read a lot about how "spineless relativists" are destroying the morals of my country (the UK). And I get really mad. Because to my way of thinking all ethical systems are relative. I mean, as opposed to what? Coming from God? I'm not an...
Ask a question. →
I enabled the “ask questions” feature. Finally. I admit it’s partly because I’m a little desperate for someone to say something that could lead me to an idea of some sort, since I’m in need of ideas and lacking in inspiration, but I hear it’s unattractive to admit you’re desperate, so maybe I shouldn’t have said that. Maybe I should have said:...
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So, I read something about “ad homonym attacks” today. It’s an amusing misspelling, but I’ve tried and failed to find something that would legitimately be an “ad homonym attack” — a personal attack by way of homonym. Or perhaps an attack related to advertisement homonyms. Or anything, really, that could make humorous sense of the “ad homonym...
I have a really hard time with favorites. Maybe I just don’t like to commit. Favorite foods, authors, photographers, colors, movies, bands, people — I just can’t do it. If I ever get interviewed in one of those lazy “five questions for … (insert name)” columns, it’s either going to be the most noncommittal interview ever, or it’s going to be a load...
The Beaten Cannoneer →
Seymour Krim sounds fascinating — if only there were somewhere (preferably online) other than out-of-print or yet-to-be-published books I could read him. (via)
Potentiality
This AskReddit got me thinking: do we fetishize potential? Those who could do anything impress us more than those who do everything. We’re content not trying because, after all, we could, and that’s what matters. We value potential as an end unto itself, not a means to somewhere specific. Conversely, we devalue achievement, especially when many apparently had the potential to achieve...
These places →
Testing out Tumblr’s new static pages feature: here’s a small series of pictures from last summer. I’m not sure if there’s a common theme running through them or anything. (In related news, getting horizontal scrolling to work well through CSS is a bitch. Also, Chrome has spoiled me with vertical space.)
The unlikely life and sudden death of The Exile,... →
I like these “rise and fall of a publication” stories, like this one that I keep linking to. Except the story of The Exile is a lot darker. And feelings are still running hot:
[Taibbi] tried to get back in touch with Ames many times, but Ames refused, because Taibbi “betrayed The Exile. The Exile was incredibly unique and fragile, and it was the only thing fighting the right fight,...
February 2010
Fuck. The day has come: I’m reduced to writing about my own inability to write. Not my inability to write well, but simply my inability to write anything, to overcome the glare of a blank page. I thought I could beat creative block forever, but evidently I couldn’t. Lately I’ve been a repellant to anything and everything that ever moonlighted as creativity: not only am I unable...